A Looming Donnybrook On the East End

THIS year's election in New York's First Congressional District was destined to be hotly contested from the moment last summer when the mercurial Michael P. Forbes became the first Republican congressman in 27 years to switch to the Democratic Party. National Republican leaders immediately vowed to unseat the turncoat, while Democratic leaders in Washington warmly embraced him.

But Mr. Forbes's reception from Democrats in his East End district has ranged from wary and unenthusiastic to downright hostile. Some local party leaders have already publicly declared Mr. Forbes unacceptable. Possible challengers have emerged, threatening to force a primary election that could prove crippling to Mr. Forbes even if he wins it.

Mr. Forbes insists that none of this comes as much of a surprise. Clearly, he must have known that the divorce would be messy when he stood outside his Quogue home last July and announced that he was becoming a Democrat because the Republican Party had become ''tone deaf'' to the concerns of average Americans.

He also must have known that the remarriage would often be uneasy. Democrats in his district, which includes the five East End towns plus Brookhaven and most of Smithtown, were forced into an arranged marriage, and the bride was someone they had worked vigorously to defeat for the last six years.

''This is a very human business,'' Mr. Forbes said in an interview in his district office in Coram. ''All the local Democrats knew were the local campaigns and it was about winning and losing. I knew it was going to take time for them to get to know me.''

But Mr. Forbes may not have banked on the tenacity of local Democratic opposition. Suffolk County's Democratic leader, Dominic Baranello, has said that he will not endorse Mr. Forbes if he accepts the Right to Life Party's endorsement. Mr. Forbes ran on the Republican and Right to Life lines in each of the last three elections and says he is likely to accept the Right to Life endorsement again this year -- setting up a confrontation that will not be easily resolved.

Stuart Rothenberg, a Congressional analyst who publishes a political newsletter, said that of the 406 incumbent representatives who are seeking re-election, he regarded Mr. Forbes as the most vulnerable.

''I would make him an underdog because the Democrats never accepted him and the Republicans are out to get him,'' Mr. Rothenberg said. ''It's early to entomb an incumbent, but my gut tells me that Mike Forbes is toast and if any incumbent is hanging on by a microscopic hair, it's Mike Forbes.''

Mr. Forbes nonetheless remains optimistic. ''I take the longer view of the whole situation,'' he said. ''I can't react to every little incident that will occur. I'll leave it to the professional politicians to sort all of that out. In the end, I don't think we'll be at odds and I will be the Democratic nominee.''

His confidence stems from the overwhelming support he enjoys from national Democratic leaders. Ecstatic that they were able to woo Mr. Forbes away from the Republican Party and eager to regain control of the House, leaders of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee have promised Mr. Forbes that they will do whatever it takes to get him re-elected. The Democrats are six seats away from winning a majority in the House, and they know that keeping Mr. Forbes' district, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats roughly two to one, is crucial to their ultimate goal.

''We can't afford to lose this seat,'' said Representative Gary L. Ackerman, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Suffolk, Nassau and Queens and who was instrumental in persuading Mr. Forbes to switch parties. ''It's not just a seat, it's a movement. It's the agenda for the American people.''

He said that more than 100 Democratic representatives have already agreed to send Mr. Forbes $2,000, the maximum campaign contribution they can make. ''We talk about this all the time, we have revival meetings about it,'' Mr. Ackerman said. ''We're doing what Republicans used to do because this is important, this is a zero-sum game.''

The Republicans, for their part, seem to be united behind one candidate, Felix J. Grucci Jr., the Brookhaven town supervisor. Mr. Grucci has been involved in local politics for many years but is perhaps best known as president of Fireworks by Grucci, a family business that has staged pyrotechnic displays worldwide.

Anthony Apollaro, the leader of the Suffolk County Republican Party, said that the county's town leaders were solidly behind Mr. Grucci, noting that he has a strong base of support in Brookhaven and has high name recognition throughout the county.

Howard C. DeMartini, Mr. Grucci's senior strategist and a former consultant to Mr. Forbes, noted that Mr. Grucci won re-election last year with more than 60 percent of the vote even though his campaign was shadowed by charges that Brookhaven and the Republican leadership were steeped in corruption. John Powell, chairman of the Brookhaven and Suffolk County Republican parties, was convicted of taking bribes at the town landfill and of dealing in stolen trucks.

''This is a district that wants to vote Republican,'' Mr. DeMartini said, ''so if you give them a strong Republican candidate, chances are they will win.''

Mr. Apollaro said that because this will probably be one of the most hotly contested congressional races in the country, he expected that the Republican National Committee ''will put their money where they suggested they will,'' and added that ''some checks have already started to come in.''

Bradford W. O'Hearn, a spokesman for the Democratic Party in Suffolk County, said there was little doubt that both sides ''will bring in their big guns on this race'' because control of the House hangs in the balance. But, he added, ''there may be divisions in both parties because not everyone shares the same objectives.''

Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Brookhaven Town Democratic Committee, for example, has publicly denounced Mr. Forbes.

''Regardless of what his registration card says, the fact that Mike Forbes is even considering accepting the endorsement of the Right to Life Party tells me he is no Democrat,'' Mr. Mitchell said. He added that Democratic leaders ''would be misguided to sacrifice the soul of our party and our beliefs for the speakership and chairmanships on committees.''

William G. Holst, a former Suffolk County legislator who is so far the only Democrat who has announced the creation of an exploratory committee to run against Mr. Forbes, agreed. ''We all want the Democrats to control the House,'' he said. ''But the former speaker, Tip O'Neill, said that all politics is local, so when the people in Washington forget that fact, they do it at their peril and they risk being embarrassed.''

Mr. Baranello, who ultimately will control the nominating process, was quick to note that neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Holst speaks for the local Democratic Party. He said, however, that the party does have a policy of not supporting candidates who have the Right to Life endorsement and in fact has withdrawn its support from such candidates in a number of local races.

Democratic leaders from across the state, including Mr. Ackerman and former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch, have called Mr. Baranello in recent weeks to argue Mr. Forbes's case. They say that in a close race, Mr. Forbes may need the roughly 8,000 votes he has drawn from the Right to Life line in previous elections.

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Mr. Baranello said he was not impressed. ''I told them, 'You're not from Suffolk County,' '' he said. ''And this is an issue we have felt strongly about in the past.''

Mr. Baranello did not rule out the possibility that some type of agreement could be struck. ''We've got plenty of time before the nominating convention,'' he said. The party does not need to formally nominate its candidate for the congressional seat until mid-May; a primary, if there is one, would be in September.

Mr. Holst, who ran against Mr. Forbes in 1998 and lost by a 64 to 36 percent margin, said he would decide by the end of the month whether he would mount a primary campaign. He said he decided to start the process this early because he was handicapped by a late start in 1998, when he was only able to raise about $50,000, compared to Mr. Forbes's $800,000. To date, Mr. Forbes has raised about $500,000 for the upcoming election, but Democratic and Republican leaders have hinted that the campaign kitty for either party in this election could run as high as $3 million. Mr. O'Hearn said that a typical contested House race on Long Island costs about $1 million.

Two years ago, Mr. Holst cast Mr. Forbes as a conservative Republican who opposed abortion, favored school vouchers and had the National Rifle Association's endorsement. He acknowledged that Mr. Forbes has since softened his position on gun control and public education. ''But if you try to figure out what he's really all about, you just see him positioning and repositioning,'' Mr. Holst said. ''There isn't anything that he's really committed to.''

Tony Bullock, chief of staff to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former East Hampton town supervisor and another possible Democratic challenger who has not yet declared his candidacy, was even more critical. ''There was always going to be considerable opposition to his rather radical-right past,'' he said of Mr. Forbes. ''How could this guy who rode into town on the Newt Gingrich glory train suddenly become a Democrat?''

Mr. Forbes has spent a good deal of time since last July trying to answer that question.

Despite coming from a family of Democrats, Mr. Forbes registered as a Republican when he turned 18 because he figured that the best way to be effective was to work with the party that ran things in Suffolk County.

Over the years, he became increasingly conservative and worked on the staffs of Senators Alfonse M. D'Amato of New York and Connie Mack of Florida. The Republican Party was so much a part of his life that he met his wife, Barbara, at a reception for Senator D'Amato and the two were married in Senator Bob Dole's office in 1990. By the time he was elected in 1994, Mr. Forbes had become an acolyte of Newt Gingrich's and was an avid spokesman for the Republicans' Contract With America.

But once in office, he increasingly steered a course independent of the G.O.P. leadership. His current critics describe his behavior as erratic and unpredictable, but his Democratic supporters say he evolved into a more moderate politician.

Mr. Forbes said his disillusionment with the Republican Party started in 1995 when the Republicans shut down the government and grew as conservatives moved to roll back environmental legislation. He became increasingly isolated after 1997 when he was one of the first Republicans to declare that he would not support Mr. Gingrich's re-election as speaker.

Despite having voted for the impeachment of President Clinton, Mr. Forbes said he found himself siding with Democrats on more and more issues he felt were important to his constituents, including campaign finance reform and a patients' bill of rights.

It became clear, he said, that the Republican leaders in the House had become ''intolerant and incapable of governing.'' He finally switched parties, he said, ''because I was elected to try to get things done and I realized that with more than 200 people on my side, I wouldn't have to battle with my own leadership constantly anymore.''

Republican leaders promptly declared Mr. Forbes a No. 1 target in the upcoming election and, he believes, engineered the mass resignation of his 15-person staff two days after he announced he was leaving the party. Within hours of losing his staff, Mr. Forbes's new Democratic colleagues sent over their own staff members to run Mr. Forbes's offices in Washington and Coram. ''My colleagues in Congress have been generous and supportive when the other side has been doing some of the most unscrupulous things I've ever seen,'' he said.

Not only did Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader, guarantee that Mr. Forbes would not lose his seniority when he became a Democrat, he also convinced another Democrat, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, to take a leave of absence from the powerful House Appropriations Committee so that Mr. Forbes could retain his seat on the committee. He also appointed Mr. Forbes to the Banking Committee.

''I am proud to be a Democrat,'' Mr. Forbes said. ''And one of the main reasons is that Democrats welcome a healthy exchange of views and I feel that even if I disagree, I will have the opportunity to make my case.''

Eric Smith, a spokesman for the Democratic congressional caucus, said that while the abortion issue may be a seriously divisive one in Suffolk County, it is not one which the caucus has a strong stand on because so many members, particularly ones from the South, are anti-abortion.

''When we look at Michael Forbes, we see a legislator who's done the right things on education, retirement security, labor and environmental issues,'' he said. ''We believe he's got a record of values that are shared by Democrats.''

Mr. Smith also said that one of the reasons that the Democratic Party had such a hard time unseating Mr. Forbes when he was a Republican was that he has long had the strong support of labor and environmental groups. ''He was supported by a large part of the Democratic coalition even before he became a Democrat,'' he said.

Jack Caffey, president of the Long Island Federation of Labor, said that unions across Suffolk County would campaign vigorously for Mr. Forbes.

''Most of our people are registered Republicans,'' Mr. Caffey said. ''But as long as the conservative Southern leadership controls Congress, Long Island's workers lose. That's why we're taking the position we are.''

The Cook Political Report, a Washington newsletter, has pegged Mr. Forbes's race as one of five Democrat-held seats that is a tossup right now.

Amy Walter, an editor for the Cook Political Report, said that Mr. Forbes must walk a fine line. ''He has to court Democrats who he has been attacking strongly since 1994 without alienating Republicans, but he also has to attract disgruntled Republicans without appearing too Republican,'' she said. ''That's a lot to do.''

Editors' Note: March 5, 2000, Sunday An article on Page 1 of the Long Island section today discusses Representative Michael P. Forbes's difficult campaign to be re-elected after becoming the first Republican representative in a generation to switch to the Democratic Party. The article says the Suffolk County Democratic chairman promised to oppose Mr. Forbes if, as planned, he accepted the endorsement of the Right to Life Party. On Thursday, after the section had gone to press, Mr. Forbes reversed himself and announced that he would refuse the Right to Life line.